A colleague who's new to Houston saw the recent announcement by Peña's Donut Heaven that they were introducing a kolache filled with chef Ronnie Killen's celebrated brisket, and he wondered if people would protest that combining these two iconic Texas foods was a sacrilege.

Quite the contrary. The frisky little Pearland burger-­shop­-and­-bakery's move seems inspired, and wholly natural. It reflects the trait that has most defined Houston food in recent decades: our enthusiastic borrowing from the diverse culinary strains that converge here.

I'm not just speaking of the indigenous Southern, Mexican, Louisiana and smokehouse/cowboy influences that had begun to weave together in interesting ways by the 1970s and 1980s, in restaurants as disparate as Ouisie's and the various Jim Goode spots. I'm speaking also of the Asian and South Asian threads that emerged after the Immigration Act of 1965 abolished national quotas, setting the stage for today's flourishing Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Indian and Pakistani communities (among others) here in Houston.

Our young chefs and food entrepreneurs grow up steeped in this unique Houston Gulf Coast blend, eating along Bellaire and Long Point, making a kolache­-and­-barbecue run to Vincek's Smokehouse in East Bernard, hitting chef L.J. Wiley's Taco Nuts food truck for tacos filled with avocado, tomato, mango and Thai herbs; or a torta stuffed with Southern-­style sausage and collards. When they borrow, it's not so much a matter of top­-down, concept-driven "Fusion" as it is a rootsy cultural exchange that comes naturally, from the bottom up.

Mixing and matching has become our culinary birthright. In the nation that is Texas, Houston — with its port and its flourishing economy and its early influx of international immigrants — has been the leading edge of this trend.

Whereas 20 years ago, the advent of a huevos ranchero kolache at the Kolache Factory attracted a bit of delighted surprise, now the reaction to Peña's idea of stuffing the Tex­Czech bun with Killen's sanctified brisket is more along the lines of "What took you so long?"

Indeed, just hours after the brisket kolache was announced to the world, kolache baker extraordinaire Victoria Rittinger was already riffing further on the idea. Rittinger's extended family has plenty of Czech-­belt cred, and she thinks nothing of adapting the family's original kolache recipe to include anything from Louisian boudin to Texas goat cheese and three-pepper jelly.

She liked the brisket kolache initiative just fine, but she had an improvement in mind. Tweeted Rittinger: "I'd actually say beef ribs make better kolaches than brisket."